Tagged: Placido Polanco

As Jeff pointed out yesterday, the signing of Matt Holliday does not mean that the Cardinals have lost sight of Pujols and his impending contract year. If anything, it shows that they are clearing the air and setting up a supporting cast so they can make sure he stays put. However, I’d like to see something else happen.

See, at this moment in time the Tigers are also clearing out contracts. Granderson and Polanco are gone and despite the money they have tied up in some pretty mediocre pitching, the Tigers will have some wiggle room in 2011.

How perfect would it be if on the five year anniversary of the Cardinals beating the Tigers in the World Series, the Tigers could return the favor in pulling off the coup of the (admittedly brand new) decade by landing Pujols?

Now, I’m not saying it’s probable. I’m not even really saying it’s possible. I just think the idea of Pujols with an old English “D” on his chest is magical. And the thought of Jeff’s lurid fantasies about Albert also involving a navy blue hat with a big white “D” on it makes me smile.

Pop quiz. What do Smokey Robinson, Curtis Granderson and The Jackson Five have in common? If you guessed that they all got their start with Motown, you’d be right. But if you guessed that they all got out of Motown as soon as possible, you’d also be right. I mentioned the other day that life had gotten a little bit more sucky when Pla-Po left for Philadelphia. Well, it’s going to get a lot more sucky when Granderson leaves for the Yankees. Thelma Houston had it right when she sang “Don’t leave me this way.”

There is an upside, though, even if it’s just my imagination. As much as I like Granderson and enjoyed watching him play, he sure struck out a lot and seemed to do it at inopportune moments. Not only that but they say this Austin Jackson fellow can play some ball so maybe it will turn out to be a good thing. But even if this is all true, as another Motown discovery put it, ‘It’s so hard to say good-bye to yesterday.”

The thing is, and this may come as a surprise to some of you, but I don’t have a whole lot of control over what happens in the Tigers’ front office. You’d think that Dombrowski would be monitoring this blog to see what I think but it just doesn’t work that way. Apparently he makes his decisions completely independently of me. And even though he may know what he’s doing, he has definitely left myself and other Tigers fans channeling Marvin Gaye when we ask “What’s going on?” I’m pretty sure I’ll be asking that question again the first time I see Granderson in pinstripes.

In 2005, the St. Louis Cardinals called up a 27 year-old lifetime minor leauger to get his first hacks at the big league level. That man’s name was John Rodriguez.

Don’t remember him? No worries. Most people don’t.

Mr. Rodriguez came on pretty strong during his brief glimpse of the Majors, hitting .295 with 5 HRs and 24 RBI in 149 at-bats. The folks in St. Louis liked him and his cinderella story so much that someone decided to grace Mr. Rodriguez with the nickname: J-Rod (a la A-Rod, K-Rod, YourMom-Rod, et al).

J-Rod *ahem* wasn’t a fan of the name. Why? Maybe because he wasn’t A-Rod! To be honest, he wasn’t anywhere close to being an A-Rod type player. His greatest downfall was was being born with the same easily nicknameable name as poster boy Alex while also having a first initial that contained just one syllable (you see, W-Rod would never work).

Flash forward to December 7th, 2009 and my trusty misanthrope of a colleague, Mr. Allen Krause, deigns us with the phonetically challenged nickname “Pla-Po” for his beloved (and now long gone from Detroit) Placido Polanco.

Pla-Po? Are you kidding me? How is that even pronounced? PLAY-Poh? Plah-POH? Ah, forget it; all I know is that it sucks.

So, please know, Mr. Krause, that from now on we are calling for a complete ban on poorly constructed nicknames, specifically on those you created. For those of you dear readers unaware, the following Krausian nicknames shall no longer be used, under any circumstances, lest you wish the worst on the baseball-politico community:

Well, if the “news media” and its “official reports” are to be believed, it appears that Placido Polanco will be leaving the Motor City for the City of Brotherly Love. Pla-Po (a name I gave him that just doesn’t seem to be catching on) will take his Gold Glove and join the not quite World Champion Phillies, leaving Detroit slightly more sucky. If that’s possible.

Now, as bad as this news is, it was made worse because I found out about it in the same way I inevitably hear about most bad news involving the Tigers, a gloating email from Jeff:

I’m sorry for your loss of of Polanco back to the Phils.

Tigers suck.

J

You know what else sucks? You suck. You……sucker.

There, now that I’ve finally added a certain level of maturity to the discussion maybe I can move back to the important question which is, what do we do now? My lucky wood carving of Simon Bolivar practically screams out to address the problem by acquiring more Venezuelans. But I think the number of Chavistas on the team right now already leaves the Tigers in danger of imminent nationalization at the hands of El Jefe. Not that this would present a problem for Detroit considering what has happened to its other industries.

No, the solution lies elsewhere. And since I’ve always believed that uncertain times call for intellectually suspect and overblown measures, I’m pretty sure I hit upon the perfect plan. I am calling for Lou Whitaker to step out of retirement and once again man second base. Of course there will be naysayers against my “Draft Lou” campaign but those are the same people who say that it was a bad idea to put a banker in charge of regulating the banking industry. That worked out all right in the end so why shouldn’t this? Come back, Lou! Let’s see some of that 1984 magic all over again.

Nothing says US American like a cute, dumb, South Carolinian teenager proclaiming our need to help the “education like such as South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as”… well, I mean, nothing says US American like that and fireworks. Of course.

And boy are the fireworks a flyin’.

Satiating our drama-seeking souls, Placido Polanco provided plenty of fireworks after getting clipped in the nuts by a foul tip in last evening’s 16-inning game against the Twins. He took a long, painful breather before getting back in the batter’s box and hitting the game-winning single right back up the middle.

In Cincinnati, Albert Pujols — BASEBALL GOD INCARNATE — made a strong case for his being walked with the bases loaded. Instead, David Weathers (whom Albert owns) threw one right down central. Pujols wasted no time in hitting his fourth grand slam of the season.

Still, these on the field heroics have nothing on the fireworks Sarah Palin shot off Friday by announcing her resignation as governor of the great state of Alaska.

We put our faithful RSBSinterns on the beat and they discovered the following reasons behind Palin’s controversial gubernatorial departure:

Alaska is boring

wants to move to Canada, where people actually know what a “hockey mom” is

needs more time to combat pro-choice, but only in cases involving middle to upper class white people

Todd Palin is tired of being shown up by his librarian-hot wife

the Washington Nationals are holding tryouts and she’s been working on a knuckle ball

earmarked billions to provide maps to US Americans out there in our nation who don’t have maps, which will eventually aid the education like such as South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as so everyone can plainly see that the “bridge to nowhere” does go to a town with a population of 50 people, all of whom desperately need maps to find that $442 million bridge